Fire up the smoker for Memorial Day – or any day

It is something primordial, a song that calls to us from deep within our collective soul: When it is Memorial Day, we hit the grill.

The holidays of summer demand the kind of culinary goodness that can be found only in grilled meat. It’s the most essential of cooking styles, the way mankind first learned to make meat more tender and flavorful, and it’s still one of the best.

At this time of year, there may be only one thing better than meat cooked over a fire: meat smoked over a fire.

Or, if you want to be a completist about it, meat smoked over either a fire or an electrical element that simulates the experience of a fire by slowly charring chips of wood to create smoke.

Either way, if grilled meat is great, smoked meat is spectacular.

Think barbecue. It’s long, slow cooking at a low temperature, transforming a tough piece of meat into something delectable and mouthwateringly tender. The protracted low heat creates the texture, but it is the smoke that makes the magic.

Barbecue is the ultimate expression of smoked meat, so for my Memorial Day celebration, I started out with ribs – St. Louis-style ribs, naturally. I’m afraid I did not know what makes St. Louis ribs different from baby-back ribs, but I have now learned that they are fattier (and thus more flavorful) and come from the bottom part of the ribs. Baby-back ribs are higher up on the pig, closer to the back.

Whichever type of rib you get, the idea for cooking it is the same. You’ll want to coat it in a rub, preferably overnight, and then cook it between 225 and 250 degrees for several hours. During that time, you’ll want to slowly infuse it with smoke (I used hickory) from a smoldering, slow-burning source.

Much of the flavor comes from the rub, a mixture of dry spices. Masters of smoking all have their own secret recipe for a rub, but in general, you need salt, brown sugar, paprika, garlic powder, onion powder and any other spice you care to add.

When my ribs were nearly done, I hit them with a vanilla-brown sugar glaze. You don’t have to, of course, but why would you not want to coat ribs with a vanilla-brown sugar glaze?

I spread some of the leftover glaze on buttered toast, incidentally, and it was heavenly. And I have no doubt that it would be equally good over ice cream.

The recipe for this glaze, as for the whole dish, is from Steven Raichlen’s brand-new book, “Project Smoke.” Raichlen is the undisputed master of the grill; his 27 cookbooks include 10 devoted specifically to grilling. Of all his recipes that I have tried, I have never encountered one that failed to impress.

And most were not just impressive, they were superb, worthy of serving to guests. It’s not just that he apparently understands every possible element of grilling and smoking, it’s that he also intuitively knows what kind of flavor combinations go best with grilled food. A vanilla-brown sugar glaze, for instance.

Or, for that matter, Asian spices to go with grilled lamb. I next made Raichlen’s Smoke-Braised Lamb Shanks With Asian Seasonings, and its flavor was even more satisfyingly complex than the ribs.

This recipe is genius. You begin with lamb shanks, which, after a long cook at low temperature, are rich, meaty and meltingly tender. But these aren’t cooked in the smoker’s dry heat alone; while they smoke, they also simmer in a broth of soy sauce, sesame oil, orange peel, rice wine or sherry, brown sugar, star anise and cinnamon sticks.

The resulting flavor is unlike any you have ever had. The meaty ribs are lightly sweetened with the braising sauce and scented with the perfumes of cinnamon and anise. Once you’ve made it, you can’t wait to make it again.

Because Raichlen is so successful at picking sauces to go with smoked or grilled meat, I indulged in a third selection from his new book, Smoked Chicken With Horseradish Sauce. Here, you begin by smoking a chicken, which is easy to do and relatively quick.

It is also unfailingly delicious. Poultry in general takes well to smoke; think of a smoked turkey leg or, even better, a tea-smoked duck. Chicken can be bland, or at least simple in taste, but smoke adds a most welcome touch of complexity. It also makes the skin wonderfully crispy.

As a foil to the unadorned flavor of smoke, Raichlen serves this chicken with a sauce made from mayonnaise and cider vinegar, with additional bite from prepared horseradish.

Finally, I smoked a prime rib roast with a recipe from my colleague Gary Hairlson, who is himself something of a Steven Raichlen. This recipe was perhaps the easiest of all.

Unlike the lamb shanks and pork ribs, a prime rib roast is not a tough piece of meat that needs a long exposure to a low temperature. A prime rib roast is essentially a very thick ribeye steak. It does not need low, slow cooking to make it tender; it is already blissfully tender enough as it is.

So I just put Gary’s rub on it and cooked it over indirect heat in my grill. Indirect heat turns your grill into an oven, but with tastier results; you put the fire on one side and the meat on the other so it can cook for a while without burning. For the smoke, I placed a chunk of soaked wood on the coals, creating just the right amount of hickory smoke.

I usually grill a standing rib roast – it’s the same cut of meat, with bones – for special occasions, such as Christmas and New Year’s Eve. And this is what I learned: The only thing better than a rib roast cooked over a fire is a rib roast smoked over a fire.

This story was originally published May 15, 2017 at 9:01 PM with the headline "Fire up the smoker for Memorial Day – or any day."